Simon has a long ranging history in the Middle East having worked and lived in the UAE, Egypt, and Syria during the past 7 years. His most recent job was as a sales manager in De La Rue Cash Systems FZCO. Prior to that, he was country manager for Group 4 Securicor in Syria. His next mission is to head up AMG's operations in the Middle East from his new position as International Sales Manager.

By Christian Schiller

Can you please give an introduction to AMG Systems?

AMG Systems is a supplier of fibre optic transmission systems. The company is currently expanding its product portfolio into other types of transmission as well, including twisted pair modems and wireless transmission. Characteristic for AMG Systems is that all of our technology is catering to uncompressed transmission of video with associated audio, data and Ethernet. That, in my belief, gives the company a very good position, particularly seeing that more and more applications include intelligent video analytics. Our view is, that intelligent video analytics needs an uncompressed video signal to start with. Saying that, I believe that we are in for a big market share, within transmission.

Which sectors are the most important for AMG Systems?

The biggest sector we are working on, in particular in the Middle East, is the security sector. However, we are also seeing a lot of regional activity in the transportation sector. When I say transportation I don't just mean roads, I mean railways, metros, ports, airports and so on.

According to a whitepaper from AMG Systems, uncompressed transmission of video and data is essential to getting an accurate video analysis; can you please develop that reasoning?

When speaking about intelligent video analytics, you typically want more than just motion detection. Today, a lot of the video signals are transmitted using compression technologies to transfer the video and the associated data to the control room. If you want to apply intelligent video analytics for IP transmission systems the analysis is located at the camera end - before you compress the signal. This works for basic analytic functions such as motion detection however there is a higher probability of false alarms.

What types of video analytics can be achieved using uncompressed video signals then?

Uncompressed video transmission allows the system to analyse different analytic functions from the control room. With higher-level analytics you require a full un-compressed video signal to work on. This will enable you for example, to identify suspicious as opposed to normal human behaviour. Analytics today is far more powerful than just establishing whether someone has dropped a bag in a train station or not.

Video analytics is definitely the future in the CCTV market. At the moment I think there are many resemblances to when the market for TV-recording was emerging where the 2 formats VHS and Beta-Max were fighting for international compliance. It's very important that a customer buys analytic capability that is compatible to all system brands.

Seeing that some IP-camera manufacturers are putting intelligence on the edge, doing the analysis in the camera, is your system usable in such a structure?

Yes, but what can be done in an IP camera or network is limited compared to what can be done on an uncompressed video signal. Speaking of intelligence on the edge, I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is inferior, but rather that it hasn't got the same capabilities as analytic-systems that work from the control room. Furthermore the costs of running the analytic management from the control room on a large scale project is cheaper than using edge devices.

A number of companies in the IP-camera market are actually putting analytics in the camera, however the word analytics is confusing the market and buyers are not necessarily aware of the different types of analytic functionality. For example - ANPR (automatic number plate recognition), is one type of analytics that works very well in the edge-way. However, there are much more advanced technologies available such as suspicious human behavioural recognition. You can't undertake this type of analysis through an IP camera that's why we are saying that an uncompressed image is key to future proofing any CCTV installation that wants to adopt the benefits of intelligent video analytics. To sum it up, if you are serious with analytics or the investment of your security solution, you have to look at transmission as an important part of future proofing the system.

Seeing that processing power is something that increases quite rapidly in a broad range of electronic products, would you agree that we will soon reach a point where the IP camera itself can do high-level analytics?

Technically it's possible, but commercially it probably wouldn't be viable. The reason why IP-companies are putting intelligence in the camera is because of the transmission limitations. If you are using an Ethernet transmission system, the amount of processing power required simply forces manufacturers to put analytics at the front edge of the CCTV system. It can also tie the user into one supplier which may not be the optimum solution for the analytics required to be performed.

Some of the IP-camera companies offer their customers free analytic software updates, isn't that a way to keep the investment up to date?

Look at the history of IT, in 2-3 years time your IP-Analytic camera will be out-of-date. The IP-camera manufacturer would be able to upgrade the software, but have you tried running Windows Vista on your old pc? Manufacturers won't necessarily advertise the future proofing limitation particularly when analytic capability is said to be increasing 10 fold every 3 years.

What are the main contributing factors to the opening of a Middle East AMG Systems office?

The Middle East has a significant market for transmission systems, both within transportation and security. There are also a lot of 'green field' projects attracting us. There are a lot of new developments going on; so it's very opportunistic for us. One of the other segments, outside of transportation and security, that we work with is Oil & Gas. We have actually won several projects in that area. I see that as a growing market for AMG as well.

You have worked a long time in the Middle East security market, if you compare a typical European installation with a Middle Eastern one, what are the major differences?

In Europe there are regulations and standards which organisations have to adhere to for design and installation. In the Middle East, practises are not so rigid. I recently visited a system integrator in the Middle East, and I met a team of 20 people from the sales department. The first question I asked them was who had a security background, and out of 20, only 1 put up their hand, the remaining 19 had an IT-background. The fundamental difference between Europe and the Middle East is that you find a lot of people coming from the IT-sector going straight into the security market. As a result often the first consideration for a security project in the Middle East could be technology and not security. It is however very appropriate to mention that countries such as the UAE are rigorously enforcing compliance and standards for employees and companies in this industry.

If you compare the way of doing business in Europe with the Middle East, what are the differences?

The business procedure in the Middle East is a bit more complicated, it takes longer time and it is more consensus seeking. Therefore you need to operate on many different levels of an end-user company.

To sum it up, there is a lot more security thinking involved when buying security equipment in Europe. In the Middle-East, the prime focus can be technology and not security. That is the fundamental, clear difference.